


in love with the hurricane

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: BPD Kent Parson, Borderline Personality Disorder, Epikegster, Exes, Happens around the, Homophobic Language, Kent Parson's problematic obsession with Jack Zimmermann, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Tater learned a lot about mental health the hard way, discussion of involuntary institutionalization, violation of secrecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:59:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9979508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: When Alexei shatters some of Kent's illusions about Jack, he has to choose between Kent's faith in him and the life of the person he loves.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Again, content notes:
> 
>   * Discussion of suicide (completed in the past with method descibed, attempted in the past, and possibly attempted in the present)
>   * Mental health issues and troubled relationships
>   * Violation of secrecy
>   * Truly nasty use of a homophobic slur
>   * Discussion of forced institutionalization
> 

> 
> Stay safe!
> 
> (Timeline note: the Epikegster/"Parse" comics from Year 2 happens between the first scene and second)

Alexei’s reclining in bed after sex, one arm tucked up under his pillow and one around the man with his head on Alexei’s shoulder, feeling pretty good.  So of course that’s when Parson draws an experimental line down his pectoral and says, “I should swing by Samwell and see my man Zimms. His agent is leaving it pretty late, if he waits much longer to talk to management he’ll have to take whatever salary they give him.”

Kent Parson _does_ this. Routinely, predictably, wind him up and watch him go; Alexei’s talked it over with his mother and come up with a very solid Rule of Parse. Any form of new or novel intimacy is going to make him lash out. Once he’s _used_ to it he calms down; it’s when Alexei pushes somewhere he hasn’t gone before that Parson goes for the hurtful ammunition. Openly ogling or commenting on other men in front of him; flirting or getting handsy with women where Alexei can see; rubbing his hockey prestige in Alexei’s face; voicing his depression and self-hatred. The first time Alexei took his hand Parse had looked across the room and said, “Oh, he’s cute.”

Now Alexei’s brought Parse home, had sex with him in his own bed, and that’s rebounded back on him with the comment about Zimmermann. The reminder that this is the one Parse has been waiting for, the one Alexei’s known about since they first met; the one, presumably, he’d leave all his other lovers for.

It’s a bit more subtle than when a crazy-scared foster child gets moved in with a nice new family and wrecks their house, because they want to end the pain of suspense as soon as possible. _I know you’re going to hate me eventually, so it might as well be now._ More subtle because Parse isn’t a child anymore, and anyway Alexei hasn’t told him about this tell. If he tells, Parse might change or mask it.

It’s a behaviour that probably has chased a lot of people away. Of course it should; if Alexei weren’t cast-iron in a place that a lot of people are tender flesh, it would chase him away too, because Parse isn’t a child Alexei’s sworn to take care of, he’s an adult Alexei’s fucking recreationally. An adult who never wants someone to hate him before he’s given them reason, and therefore delights in giving reason. (“Delights” is the wrong word, but he’s not in the mood to be _too_ deeply empathetic tonight.)

Alexei’s matured past the time when he would have loudly proclaimed, _I’ll be the one who will love you no matter what you do_. He’s learned not to swear that he’ll be the one who’ll never leave, no matter what. Kent Parson has a competitive nature; if Alexei threw a challenge like that in front of him, he would _find_ a way to make Alexei abandon and betray him.

So with all this taken into consideration, he doesn’t rise to the bait. He counter-attacks.

“Aces management?” he rumbles, toying with Parse’s hair. “You think he is sign with Aces? I’m think he sign with us.”

“What, the _Falconers?_ Lexi, I love you guys, but do you _seriously_ —?”

“He is come to our morning skate on Tuesday,” Alexei says helpfully. “Laugh and joke with me, old guys. Well, we laugh. He smile. He is talk with Assistant General Manager, schedule meeting next week.”

Parse is very still for a minute, and then pushes himself up to look Alexei in the eye. He looks a little bloodless. “You’re serious." 

Alexei crosses his heart in reply.

"Shit,” Parse says, and pushes himself out of bed. His feet hit the floor with a thump and then he’s squinting around the bedroom floor for his clothes. Alexei turns on the bedside lamp to augment the moonlight coming in the sheers. “Fucking— _god—_ ”

A little clinically, Alexei thinks, _He really did believe Zimmermann would come back to him._ He’s wondered a little over the years whether Parson’s self-delusion really did go all the way down, or if it was just an act to push people away, get a rise out of them. It’s… well, it’s sad.

So he sits up and bed and watches as Parson struggles into his clothes, and then stands there, fully dressed, and meets Alexei’s eyes like he’s just realized that most people would be hurt or enraged or _something_ by this response, by their immediate displacement in his priorities.

Alexei waves a hand. “I know when I tell you, you be upset, worry.” He pauses, then says, “I’m think you get different than what you want, from him.”

Parse shakes his head, and says faintly, “I have to try.” Then he licks his lip and says, “Look, I’m… I’m sorry. I know I’m being an asshole here.”

“You want apologize, you know my number,” Alexei says with magnanimous resignation, and Parson goes.

* * *

Parse doesn’t respond to his text a few days later, _should I be wishing you congratulations? ))_ but he does call at the end of the week.

“Alexei,” he says warmly. “Thanks for picking up after what I did to you. That was an asshole move. I’m sorry.”

“I say I pick up,” Alexei says noncommittally, but Parse just rolls right on over him.

“Did I ever tell you what a great guy you were? You’re just so… tolerant. You’re so good to people that way. I’m so glad I met you, man. You’ve been a fuckin’ bright spot all these years.”

“Thank you,” Alexei says. “Party, I like you too.”

Parse laughs. “Party! I love that name. You do the best nicknames. It made me feel special, you know? I just… I want you to know how much you mean to me, Lexi.”

Alexei swallows an icicle, breathes deep, and says, “You want me to know, schedule next time I see you.  Maybe I take maintenance day when we play Stars in January?”

“Don’t, ah… let’s not schedule something yet, but I, ah. You gave me so many chances. More than I ever deserved. You know? You wasted so much time on a guy like me… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay that.”

“How did meeting with Zimmermann go?”

“Ah? Uh. Well. He’s got his own... stuff, you know, so I’m trying to take care of…”

“Parson,” he says, trying to make his voice gentle. “What is talk like this? Like you saying goodbye.” The silence on the line crackles, the sound of faraway breathing. The question on his tongue is an awkward one; he doesn’t know how to make it blunt enough without turning it ungainly, abrupt. But he asks. “What is plan here? You want to kill yourself?”

“Look, don’t worry about me,” Parson says. “You worry too much about everyone else, okay? It won’t, I’m not… I’m gonna fix things. Okay?”

“Because if you thinking suicide,” Alexei presses, “I can help, find ways to make you safe.”

“I don’t need your help,” Parse says harshly. “I’m _fine._ Leave it alone, okay? You’re not my mother. Or my boyfriend. Jesus.”

After he’s hung up, Alexei chews his lip for a couple of minutes, thinking.  He calls Parse’s friend Troy, gets his voicemail, leaves a text, and considers calling Vassily. He’s an Ace, so he might have a good perspective, except… Vassily is kind of an asshole, unsympathetic to Parse, and not smart about people.  No. Then he checks the time in Russia, and calls home to wake his mother up and run the conversation by her. 

“I would worry,” she replies. “A little because of what he said, more because he has tried before, and because this has been his reason not to for years.” And her judgment is the best he knows.

So he pours himself a glass of water, noting that when this is over he’ll have to take off his shirt and shower. He’s sweating with nerves. He calls Georgia Martin.

When he was sixteen, his friend Masha hanged herself in her closet with a length of rope, and it had been the end of the most helpless fight he’d ever had, because at the end of the day he couldn’t change what was in her head. Since then he’s learned a lot about his limits, about what he can’t do, about when he can only step back.

“‘Lo?” Georgia asked, gravelly with sleep.

“Georgia, is Tater,” he says. “I need the number of someone in Aces staff. Who works with players, every day. After hours, cell phone number. Is important. And urgent.”

She doesn’t say anything; he can hear her getting up, walking through the house, hear a computer booting up. As he waits he switches the phone to speaker so he can call up the notepad app.

“Andrew Waterhouse,” Georgia says, after some clicking and typing. “Assistant coach. Got a pen?”

“Yes,” he says, tersely, and types it out standing on the balls of his feet. He reads it back to her when she’s done, to make sure he’s got it right. “Thank you, George. I go call him now.”

“Welcome, Tater,” Georgia says, and as he hangs up he blesses her in his heart, but doesn’t stop. He just dials the next number.

“Mr Waterhouse,” he says, pacing up and down his kitchen when his call connects on the second attempt. “It’s Alexei Mashkov from the Falconers. I need to talk to you about Kent Parson.”

After a moment the man on the other end of the line says, “Okay?”

“Him and me, we have argument last week. He is in Providence. I say okay, you want to apologize, you call me.  Is normal. But also, I know he is expecting good news, thing he want very much for years.” He struggles to talk slowly, running his hand through his hair as he paces, wanting to get it all out as fast as possible but knowing he has to take time, marshal his English, make a case, be _understandable._ “Tonight he is call me. Not about argument, just, 'Oh, Lexi, you such good friend, appreciate what you do for me, want to say thank you for all these years’. Not grumpy like I expect. Is… elated? Calm? Peaceful? Mr. Waterhouse, my mother is suicide counsellor. I am knowing it is… he tell me before, he try sometimes, younger. Has not been for years because he is waiting for this good news. But I ask, did you get good news? And he says no, but…”

“Jesus Christ,” Andrew Waterhouse says. “You think he’s gonna kill himself.”

Alexei swallows and says, “Yes.”

“Do you know when?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay.” The man on the other end of the line takes in a deep breath. “Okay. I’m gonna act on this, okay? Right now. I appreciate you calling me.”

“Thank you,” Alexei says. “Please go fast.”

* * *

Waterhouse calls him back the next day to thank Alexei, to say Parse is “being taken care of”. Whatever it means, Parse is out for three games due to “undisclosed injury”.

So it’s with some trepidation that Alexei answers Parse’s call the day of the second scratch, and it’s quickly justified.

“You _cocksucker,_ ” Kent Parson spits. “I was _fine._ I _know_ you’re the one who fucking told them. I should call _your_ GM and get you locked in a fucking mental asylum.”

“Party,” Alexei says tentatively. “Good to hear you alive.”

“Don’t you fucking buddy me. You’re not my friend. A real friend wouldn’t have gone fucking over my head and—”

Alexei holds the phone away from his ear so he can think. He’s not a complete stranger to this form of ingratitude; Masha was an expert at it, and bullied him into keeping silence he regrets now. And the other thing is—he’ll put up with a lot from Parse, but this isn’t a little thing. This is a firehose of venom, and it’ll hurt both of them if he lets it continue.

He does the kind thing by removing Parse’s ability to hurt him in a way he’ll regret later. He hangs up.

 _I am sorry you are angry,_ he writes. _For not believing you and breaking your secret. I understand if you need to be angry with me. But I am ok if you are alive to be angry. Hope one day you maybe forgive me._

“Mama,” he says later, when he’s told her the whole story, “I want to stop losing friends this way.”

“I know, little kitten,” she says, as warm as her fingers curling through his hair. “But you did good by him, all right?”

Alexei holds onto that. Sometimes he watches Aces games, once they get their star winger back, just to reassure himself that Parson _is_ alive. He holds those things like compresses over the aching void of the man’s absence in his life.

They play the Aces again at the very end of the season, and Parse on the ice is a _shitshow_ —so out-of-control and utterly heedless of his own safety that it terrifies Alexei, the way he’s been since he came back to the ice even though Andrew Waterhouse assures him the Aces are “on” his mental health issues. On the ice, he barely spares Alexei a glance.

The week beforehand, though, Parse had sent him a little funny email, just a macro of Alexei’s least-favourite ref and a joke to his disadvantage, and the note, “Found this on Twitter.” Tears had pricked Alexei’s eyes as he recognized it as the olive branch it was. He’d sent back pictures of his neighbour’s cat doing her morning patrol.

The night after the game Parse leaves the arena with his team, but he texts Alexei, _Still want to meet up during the summer? I have some apologies to make._

For a minute Alexei just rests his phone against his lips in a silent prayer of gratitude. Then he summons back up the energy to reply, _only if u r teaching me still to surf!!!!_


End file.
